John
13:4
It was customary for guests arriving
for a banquet or special occasion – and for the people who streamed into
Jerusalem for the Passover, there was no more special occasion than the seder
meal – to be welcomed at the door by someone who would wash the dust off their
feet for them. It was sometimes a
servant, but whoever was assigned the job, it was somebody low on the status
ladder. We are talking here about
welcoming guests who have walked through unpaved streets where animals
sometimes roamed freely.
At the Last Supper, the last meal of
any sort that Jesus would eat before his death, the last time he would gather
them all together, and the last time that Judas would be part of the group,
this detail was overlooked. You can
understand how it happened. It had been
an overwhelming kind of week, and it was amazing in many ways that they were
even able to pull it all together. I
have friends now who have had to plan their seders this week and have managed
to get most of what they need, but it hasn’t been easy. So if no one was assigned the job of washing
feet, it seems understandable.
In fact, the meal was underway and
Jesus was entering some very treacherous and demanding territory that the
disciples didn’t know anything about, when, John tells us,
“during supper Jesus,
knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had
come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer
robe, and tied a towel around himself.
Then he poured water into a basin and began to was the disciples’ feet
and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.” [John 13:2-5]
It
would be like a Thanksgiving dinner where the host or hostess jumps up from the
table in the middle of the meal and went outside to clean the guests’ windshields. It’s an incredible gesture, but is it really
the time to do it?
Now, on the one hand you could say
that it was the last opportunity that Jesus would have. They did not know that, but he did. Maybe he was feeling his own need to express
his extravagant, intimate love for these people who had left house and home to
follow him and who would face dangers and trials of their own for his sake in
the days and years to come. He had asked
a lot of them, and would ask more. I
wonder, though, if he wasn’t also trying to show them how much he was prepared
to do for them, and give them an opening into what he had already done.
He
“got up from the table.”
[John 13:4]
He
left his place of honor as the host, and went to work doing the dirty job. And he did that in the middle of a
celebration of his people’s freedom from slavery.
He
“got up from the table.”
[John 13:4]
He
could have stayed comfortable, but he set that aside. He left off conversation and singing, a good
meal, and relaxation.
He
“got up from the table.”
[John 13:4]
He
put a pause in the familiar prayers and religious observance. He put substance ahead of ritual. Living God’s love meant more than talking
about it.
He
“got up from the table.”
[John 13:4]
He
literally got his hands dirty. He did
not stand aside as if he were too good for that. In fact, doing that was the essence of his
goodness.
Jesus
was doing no more and no less than what he had done in the most profound way. He was continuing to do what he and he alone
could do. He had left eternal joy in the
presence of the Father to become truly human, knowing that betrayal and suffering
and denial and rejection and physical pain and death were all part of
that. He had gotten up from the table,
as it were, and gone out into the night to find us. He had given up his place of eternal light
and happiness to find those who are out here in the darkness, with dirty feet
and runny noses, crying instead of singing and pushing one another away – even pushing
him away when he offers help. Jesus,
from all eternity, heard the human cry and he
“got up from the table.”
[John 13:4]
What he asks of his followers is to
do the same thing. As he told them,
“I have set you an
example, that you should also do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not
greater than their Master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent
them. If you know these things, you are
blessed if you do them.” [John 13:15-17]
Following
him means that we, too, have to get up from the table.
Privilege,
safety, comfort, and all the things we are used to having on our plate are
things we need to leave there. It is
downright embarrassing to read about people who call themselves Christian who
will not, for the sake of other people’s lives, forgo the trappings of our
usual Easter Day. Didn’t Jesus himself
interrupt a religious observance in order to serve before getting back to it
when the need was fulfilled? Can we not
express solidarity with those who are endangered by giving up a few traditional
observances for one time? Is our faith
so weak as to be dependent on chocolate eggs and marshmallow peeps? Did Jesus die to cleanse us of our sins, or
to give us one more way to express our ego?
Now is not the time to think of
ourselves, but of others. What helps
them? What do they need? In the third century, when a plague was
running through the entire Roman Empire, and it reached the city of Carthage in
North Africa, the Christian bishop, Cyprian, wrote that the disaster
“searches out the
righteousness of each one, and examines the mind of the human race, to see
whether they who are healthy tend the sick; whether relations affectionately
love their kindred; whether masters pity their languishing servants; whether
physicians do not forsake the beseeching patients; whether the fierce suppress
their violence.”[1]
Does
any of this sound contemporary? Hear
also what Cyprian observed about what it means to get up from the table to
serve as Jesus served:
“These are trainings for
us, not deaths; they give the mind the glory of fortitude; by contempt of death
they prepare for the crown.”
In the same section of John where
Jesus washes the disciples’ feet he also tells them,
“Peace I leave with you; my
peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do
not let them be afraid.” [John 14:27]
[1]
Cited by Elizabeth Palmer in The Christian Century: “Reproach and
Pleading” (vol. 137, no. 8, April 8, 2020), 11.
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